Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Capitalisme

[N.B. In yesterday's comment box I mentioned that I hadn't mentioned the term "capitalism" in my post, Beckett. I was wrong because...

Oh wait, I DO mention capitalism.

My reason -- for forgetting it, I suppose -- was this: capitalism has less to do with how we judge things than our desire to always judge things according to the same criteria. Do we like it? Are we kept interested? Does it makes us want to return it? 'Buy' it again? Would we come back for more? Etc.

You cannot judge something that lacks the success/fail basis (how well it works or doesn't work for all buyers, like a product) as "working" and "not working." I mean, you CAN, but it doesn't make much sense, because poems have these things called audiences -- unlike products -- which aren't all the same. Audiences have different dreams, even though they might all be after some poems.

It's because of poetry's effect on each reader/listener, and not our judgments of the work (i.e., you can't hate this poem because it's subjective and I wrote it and love it to pieces) is why poetry is deemed subjective. But that's another post altogether, silly ryan.]